Michael Chiklis is an actor and a musician best known for his work on FX's The Shield and Gotham on FOX. He has a new album coming out called Influence which you can pre-order by clicking here. Today, Michael talks about the commencement speech he gave at his daughter's graduation this past spring (5:00), growing up in New England with a working class father and a mother who aspired to be in the Opera (12:00), and why he became filled with rage when he auditioned for the lead role in FX's The Shield (24:00). Plus, Michael discusses the performance aspect of performance art and how he channels his energy like a great athlete to live up to and completely in the moment (38:00). The two round out their conversation by discussing Mike's latest venture, a new album called Influence, and why the theatrical bands of the 70's and 80's made an impression on him as a young actor (45:00). Shownotes: Slate.com/TheMoment Twitter: @BrianKoppelman Leave a Review: itunes.com/themoment The Moment is brought to you by Freshbooks. Small business owners, FreshBooks wants to make dealing with your day-to- day paperwork ridiculously simple and quick. For your 30 day free trial, and all the simple and quick cloud accounting you can handle, go to FreshBooks.com/MOMENT and enter MOMENT in the “how did you hear about us” section. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices